


always feel like i'm in the twilight zone

by skvadern



Series: if we make it through the night everybody's gonna hear us [3]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Other, Pre-Relationship, Sasha James Lives, Unresolved God-Knows-What Tension, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension, canon-typical idiocy, creepy monster flirting, lil bit of bloodplay, we out here realising things, yo when i say creepy i mean creepy watch out
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:01:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21621916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skvadern/pseuds/skvadern
Summary: Case #0070107. Statement of Amy Patel, regarding the alleged disappearance of her acquaintance Graham Folger. Sasha listens to the whole thing, Ms Patel’s fear brought to life in Jon’s smooth, expressive voice, and then goes to the crappier basement-level loo to be quietly sick.Jon and Sasha go after answers about the thing that attacked her. Michael...well. 'Helps' is probably not the right word.
Relationships: Michael/Jonathan Sims, Sasha James/Jonathan Sims, Sasha James/Michael
Series: if we make it through the night everybody's gonna hear us [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1555078
Comments: 26
Kudos: 194





	always feel like i'm in the twilight zone

**Author's Note:**

> you should rlly read the first parts of this if you haven't already, otherwise this will make v little sense (if youre tonytonesphoneroo500 it wont make much sense anyway bt thats your business my love <3)
> 
> title from somebody's watching me by rockwell (via sharon needles) cause im a dick

Jon’s been banned from entering the Institute for at least a month, but Martin and Sasha are back at work within a week. Martin is still incredibly jumpy, flinching at shadows and refusing to go anywhere near the trapdoor he’d come bursting out of. Sasha’s not doing much better; on her third day back, she tried to pass the door to Artefact Storage to get to the nicer loos and found herself striding back down the corridor, arms locked around her stomach like she was trying to hold her organs in.

She doesn’t know what happened to what was left of the monster. She hasn’t asked, and nobody’s told her. Obviously it can’t still be lying there, smoking and _wrong_ , but that doesn’t stop her feeling like it could be.

It’s not just Artefact Storage, though. The vague sense of being somehow _observed_ , even in an empty room, that’s been itching at the back of her mind since she joined Jon’s team, always there in the odd quiet moments where there’s nothing to distract her – it’s stronger now. More pervasive, more obvious. She’s sure of it.

On a possibly related note, Elias is…different, with her. They’re seeing him more than normal with Jon still off work, and there’s definitely something up with him. Martin he treats the same way he always has, polite and professional, but Sasha is a different matter. The most annoying thing is she can’t actually tell what’s off with him. Is he staring at her too long, or watching her too closely? Is it his body language, something about his smile? But she knows she’s not imagining it. Just like she knows she’s not imagining the invisible eyes that follow her the moment she steps through the doors of the Archives.

This isn’t a normal job. She’d been right about that. It’s not a _good_ job. There is something seriously wrong in the Archives, in the whole damn Institute.

If she was smart, Sasha would quit. She would have handed in her two weeks as soon as they’d finished checking her over for evil murderous supernatural worms. If she was smart, she would have quit the night she killed what was left of Timothy Hodge.

Sasha _knows_ she’s smart. She’s got a bachelor’s in computer science and psychology from St Andrews, and she did most of a PhD at the Koestler Parapsychology Unit – she’d be Dr James if her parents hadn’t – well. That. And aside from academia, she’s a sensible, competent person.

But she’s always, _always_ been too curious for her own good. When push comes to shove, she wants to _know_ more than she wants to run screaming.

So when she’s not helping Martin to reorganise the Archives, following up on statements and fiddling with the digital database they’re setting up for the recordings, she does research.

Jon had mentioned finding her description of the monster oddly familiar, so she starts with the recorded statements, the ones that needed to go on tape. She’s become familiar enough with the insane filing system, and the little corner of it the four of them have managed to wrangle into some form of sanity, that she finds what she’s looking for fairly quickly.

Case #0070107. Statement of Amy Patel, regarding the alleged disappearance of her acquaintance Graham Folger. Sasha listens to the whole thing, Ms Patel’s fear brought to life in Jon’s smooth, expressive voice, and then goes to the crappier basement-level loo to be quietly sick.

It’s the table. It has to be. The table shows up at the Institute, delivered by those two obviously paranormal couriers, and then that _thing_ appears in Artefact Storage, elongated and many-jointed and coming after her. What would have happened, if Michael hadn’t shown up, if she hasn’t gotten to the camera in time? Would there be something else sitting at her desk right now, calling itself Sasha and looking nothing like her at all, setting back up the photo frames that now had a stranger in her place?

Would the others have noticed? Graham Folger hadn’t had anyone to know him other than Amy Patel, but if the bodysnatching monster could change photographs, it could probably change people’s memories as well. What would be the point otherwise? She imagines a strange, horrible not-her chatting with Martin as they put folders back in their proper place, smoking on the balcony with Jon that night. Holding Jon’s hand. Lying down with Jon as he stares at it, believing all the while that he’s looking at her, Sasha, his friend.

She tells Martin she’s taking the rest of the day off – doesn’t explain herself beyond that, but she doesn’t have to. He just gives her a sad little smile and tells her to look after herself. When she leaves, she takes the folder with Amy Patel’s statement, and brings the tape too.

Jon’s got a little flat in Shepherd’s Bush, the first floor of an old townhouse. She’s been there once before; ostensibly to do a shop for him since his mobility hadn’t been great in the first week, but mostly to make sure he stayed put and didn’t try anything. She’s made spag-bol for him, and they’d watched one of Jon’s old David Attenborough DVDs, and it’d been…nice. Weirdly nice compared to every other bit of her life.

It takes a couple of minutes for Jon to get to the door. He still looks like shit, has obviously not been sleeping, but he smiles when he sees her. A real, pleased smile.

The smile falls a bit when she strides in and dumps the folder on his dinner table, but he follows her and sinks into a chair, pulling the written copy of the statement towards him and sliding on his glasses. His eyes widen slightly when he reads the name at the top, and then widen further. He flicks through it, eyes skipping down the page like he knows Amy Patel’s words off by heart, until he finds the paragraph describing the monster that had killed her neighbour and stolen his life.

“Is this…?” he asks, and she nods. “Christ,” he sighs, running a hand over his face, on the side not covered in dressings. “Jesus, Sasha.”

“Trust me, I know.”

“And if Michael hadn’t showed up…” He stares at her with a strange, desperate glint in his eyes, and she tries to smile at him.

“It was there, though. And we killed that thing, and I lived.”

Jon nods, as if reassuring himself. “Yes, yes you did. You’re okay.”

“I mean, I wouldn’t go that far.”

He snorts a laugh at that. “Fair enough, yes.” He lays the statement back down on the table like it’s fragile. “I don’t suppose you found anything else on this, ah, this monster?”

“I looked, back when we followed up on Ms Patel’s statement. I was curious, you know?” She’d dug out one of her old notebooks before she left the Archives, the one with all her notes about the body-snatcher. “There’s a lot of stuff on changelings, doppelgangers, shapeshifters, that sort of thing, but little that’s actually credible. And anyway, what this thing does, it doesn’t turn itself into you. It turns itself into someone else, and it somehow makes everyone think you looked like that. I ended up falling into a research hole on Capgras syndrome – that’s-“

“A delusion where you perceive someone you know to be an imposter, I’m aware of it.” Sasha’s never minded Jon interrupting her; she knows it’s not a sexist thing, he interrupts everyone, and she’s no saint herself. “I considered the possibility after reading this statement.”

“I don’t think it is Capgras, though. Capgras syndrome is a symptom of schizophrenia or some forms of dementia, or something structurally wrong in the brain. It doesn’t just _happen_ to a healthy person, and from what Tim could find, Ms Patel was otherwise healthy.”

Jon nods slowly. “Right, okay. Could you find anything more?”

“There’s a few mentions in the literature, and some of the old statements – the ones I can find, anyway. A healthy person who claims someone they know has been changed into someone else, and nobody believes them. Nobody else who saw its real form, that I’ve found anyway.” She and Jon make the _Fuck this filing system_ face common to all Magnus Institute researchers, and seen more often in the Archives than anywhere else in the building. “They all describe the new…thing as being somehow malicious, taunting them.”

“Like the Not-Graham did to Amy Patel.” Jon’s steepled his fingers, and he doesn’t look tired anymore. With the light of a new mystery dancing in his eyes, he looks _alive_. Sasha knows that if she had a mirror right now, she’d see that expression on her own face. “But there’s not anything more substantial?”

“No,” Sasha sighs, scraping her hair off her face. She’s taken to using clips to keeping the shorter curls Michael left her with out of her eyes, but she got her hair from her mum; thick 3C curls that do their own thing, and she fiddles with it enough that the clips tend to get dislodged. “It’s all the same – terrified person gets their life touched by something awful, comes stumbling to Chelsea to tell us, we write it down, do some follow up, find _nothing_ of any value and stick it in a folder to gather dust till someone comes to see what we found, which was, of course, _nothing –_ ” Her voice is rising as she talks; she shuts up, feeling her cheeks heat.

Jon isn’t doing his judgemental face at her, though. He just nods, like he completely agrees. “Sometimes I wonder,” he says slowly, “how Gertrude did it, all those years.”

“I don’t”, Sasha replies. “I met her.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, she came to Artefact Storage a couple of times while I worked there. Both times, I helped her find various things she was after. We talked, a bit. And either she didn’t give a damn about any of it and was just keeping the office chair warm, or she knew _exactly_ what was happening and had a hand in plenty of it.”

“Based on how Martin found her body,” Jon murmurs, “I’d say the latter. Wouldn’t you?”

It’s not a comfortable thought, but Sasha does find herself agreeing with him. “I wish we could ask her. How much she knew, anything at all - I’ve got so many questions. But I guess that was probably the point.”

Jon blinks. “You think someone killed her to stop her talking? Or because she knew too much?”

“I don’t know, Jon. All I know is that all three of Gertrude’s assistants disappeared years ago, and then she got _shot_ , and now there’s just four of us sitting on a pile of things we don’t even know where to start understanding, and _that’s_ when Prentiss attacks the Archives.” She rubs a hand over her face. “Like I said, I don’t know. There’s no evidence that those two are connected, I just get the sense that the Archives wouldn’t have fallen so easily with her still alive.”

“We did the best we could.” Jon looks a bit hurt, and yeah, when she plays that back, it does sound like she’s accusing him of something. Then he sighs deeply. “But it wasn’t nearly good enough. If Elias hadn’t gotten to the fire suppression system in time, Tim and I would be dead – Martin as well, probably.” He smiles wryly at her. “You’d probably be fine, you’d have your Michael to protect you.”

Sasha scoffs. “It’s not _my_ Michael, and I don’t trust it as far as I could throw it.”

“But you’d have survived,” he argues. “Elias could have made you head archivist instead. Perhaps he should have from the start – I’m sure you’d have done a better job with it than I have. You’ve already cultivated a source – if it’s even possible to get answers out of something like Michael.”

She’s about to protest that, but then his words sink in, and her head shoots up. “Michael knew what it was, the body-snatcher, the Not-Graham. Or at least, it knew _something_. It told me that it didn’t like to be looked at, that implies it’s met it before, dealt with it.” Sasha can hear the excitement in her voice, see it mirrored on Jon’s eager face as he leans forward. A little voice that sounds like her mum is going _danger, danger, whatever you’re about to do **don’t**_ but it’s a lead, their only lead, and she can’t let this go. She _can’t_ , and even if she could, Jon won’t.

“So,” Jon says, those beautiful intense eyes fixed on hers, “how do we find your Michael, then? I think we’ve got a statement to take.”

~~~~~

A week after he moved into the Archives, Martin had taken a statement from some poor student who showed up, wild-eyed and shaking, almost as soon as the door opened. The student’s story had concerned an ‘unsettling experience’ he and his friends had had in an abandoned office block in Wembley – apparently, a monster had appeared and chased them through it, and one of them had fallen through a gap in the floor and broken his leg. Unfortunately for any sympathy Jon might have had for the statement-giver, further research had unearthed that the guy was out on bail for a possession charge – LSD, of all things. Two of the friends with him had been charged as well, including the one with the broken leg. Apparently, they’d been so scared – ‘Or just tripping _that_ hard,’ according to Tim – that they’d actually called the police.

Martin had been sure there was something to it, had even taken the statement on tape instead of his laptop “just in case”, but Jon had refused to investigate further on principle, and that had been that. Except when Sasha reads back over it, she can’t help but note the monster that Mr Thompson had described – long and rail-thin, with a round face, blond curls, a strange echoing laugh, and hands the guy had thrown up trying to describe.

They don’t know if Michael has anything to do with the building; it’s been abandoned since the financial crash, tied up in a net of deeds and planning permission that’s left it to sit and collect graffiti and used needles. Nothing supernatural about it, as far as they can tell. But it’s their only lead.

Jon actually looks better, now he has a purpose, a research project. Sasha’s still not sure how happy she is about bringing him along, but when she brought it up Jon put his foot down on her going alone. Hard.

“This _Michael_ thing has some sort of interest in you, that’s for certain. Just because the interest isn’t in immediately murdering you, that doesn’t mean it’s _safe_ , Sasha. All these, these things that get _interested_ in people, how often does it end well for them?”

She hadn’t liked Jon’s tone when he said that; had actually made him apologise for talking down to her, though he hadn’t looked happy about it. But patronising bosses aside, he hadn’t been entirely wrong. She doesn’t trust Michael; she doesn’t think Michael can or should be trusted. Going to meet it alone is not a good idea, and honestly, nobody but Jon is stupid enough to come with her.

So here they are, just after sunset, picking their way through the ground floor. It looks about how Sasha expected; graffiti everywhere, mattresses and rubbish and the faint but pervading smell of wee. There’s people curled up on some of the mattresses, but they don’t look up as Jon and Sasha pass.

They make their way up worrying-looking concrete stairs to the first floor, following the blueprints Sasha found to what they’re fairly certain is the room the students were first attacked in. The door is hanging off one hinge, and the interior looks the same as any of the other rooms – stained carpet, decaying office furniture, broken windows. There’s a man sitting on the only surviving office chair, feet up on a rotting desk. He looks up when they come in and Sasha tenses, but there’s nothing malicious in his face, just tired curiosity.

Jon walks straight up to him and pulls a twenty out of his pocket. “You’re probably not going to want to be here in a few minutes. I suggest you go and sleep on another floor.”

The man looks him up and down, then smiles and takes the twenty, clambering to his feet. “Well,” he says in a Black Country accent, “whatever floats your boat, I suppose. Have fun, lad.” He winks at her as he passes, and they listen in silence to his footsteps as they echo off the stairwell.

Jon shakes his head, looking around the room. “Any idea what he was on about?” A quick study of his face shows nothing teasing – she’s pretty sure he genuinely does have no idea.

“I’m fairly sure he thought we were going to shag in here,” she tells him, mostly to see his face.

She’s not disappointed – Jon stammers and stutters, and she can even make out a blush under his brown skin. He glares at her when she grins and mutters something about trying to be respectful. Sasha smiles as she turns away, letting him collect himself, and ruthlessly squishes the tiny bit of her going _is it really_ **_that_** _bad, that he thought we were like that?_ That’s not fair on either of them.

Neither of them can see anything particularly weird about the room, and she’s starting to wonder if this is going to be a dead end, when Jon straightens and turns to her.

“It came for you,” he says, like she should understand what he means by that. When she raises an eyebrow at him, he sighs in a way she somehow manages to find endearing instead of rude, and elaborates. “Both times, Michael wasn’t tied to a specific place or situation – you’re the only common factor. Based on how convenient its timing was in Artefact Storage, I’d say there’s some way you can draw it to you.”

Sasha give him a flat stare. “So you’re saying we came to a creepy abandoned building at night for nothing?”

“I don’t know about nothing,” Jon argues, running a hand through his hair, “this place might still be somehow special. In which case, we’ve doubled the effect, making it even more likely Michael will show up.”

Sasha nods; he’s right, she knows he is. _How_ she knows she’s not entirely sure; the information just fits somehow with the way Michael is, what she knows about it. Now she just needs to work out how she can…draw it to her. _Wonderful phrasing there, Jon_.

“Maybe if I was scared?” she wonders.

Jon snorts. “So what, I jump out from behind the door at you? I don’t think that’s going to work.”

She thinks for a moment, then remembers – a slender dark band wrapping around a twisted, bony wrist. Reaching up, she lets her hair down, shaking it out of the bun she’d pulled it into earlier. She doesn’t exactly _miss_ the way Jon inhales and sways slightly, unconsciously closer, but her conditioner does have a very nice smell. Anyway, she’s got more important things to do right now. Running her fingers through her hair nets her five or six loose strands, and she twists them together.

Sasha doesn’t carry a lighter anymore, too much of a temptation, but Jon has his metal Zippo in his pocket and hands it over readily enough. She doesn’t explain what she’s doing when she lights her hair on fire, but he doesn’t look surprised.

The hair catches quickly, flaring up to her fingers. She lets it go and it falls away, ash sloughing off as it spirals to the floor. They watch it until the last of the fire winks out.

Behind them, a door creaks open.

Jon spins round sharply, but Sasha follows more slowly; she already know what she’s going to see. Michael steps into the room, letting the door that definitely wasn’t set in the exterior wall creak closed again behind it. It looks human, more or less – there’s something off about it still, like it’s just on the edge of being too tall, too thin, and its curls look like they’re moving, just a little. But its hands are normal. Normal looking. Probably a little bit too big, but at this point if they’re not actually knives she can cope.

It smiles at her, bright and twisted in a way that makes Sasha’s stomach do odd, scared flips. Then its eyes fall on Jon, and they narrow like a cat’s. Its smile… _turns._

Before she knows she’s moving, Sasha has stepped between them.

Jon closes his hand round her arm from behind her, saying “Sasha!” in a sharp, worried voice. In front of her, Michael is grinning, staring like they’re the most interesting things it ever did see.

“This would be your Archivist, then?” it asks, and she can hear the capital letter. It’s swaying forward ever so slightly, or maybe that’s just her imagination.

“It would,” she replies, raising her chin and looking it in its shifting, hypnotic eyes.

Jon makes a protesting noise behind her, and Michaels’ eyes _sharpen_ as it focuses on him. “Don’t be so ungrateful, Archivist,” it instructs him in a sing-song tone. “Your assistant is trying to do you a favour. After all, I am more than a little dangerous.”

“I know,” Jon says, with that tone he gets when he’s trying to be brave. “I saw the hole you left in her shoulder.”

Michael sighs, and it sounds like static. “I was only trying to help.”

“I know,” Sasha tells it, trying to keep it happy, keep its attention on her. Its eyes roll back to her when she speaks, and they…they don’t soften. Not really. But also, they do.

She’s already getting a headache.

Michael looks away from her to cast its gaze round the room, fingers tapping in a slow roll against the jeans that it always wears, the ones it doesn’t wear like clothes. “Hmm, I know this place.”

“You’ve been here before,” Jon says, “or, we think you have. You chased a group of students around it.”

It blinks slowly, then chuckles and gives a little sigh of pleasure. “Oh yes, so I did. That was fun.”

“I don’t think they had much fun,” Jon mutters, and Sasha seriously considers stepping on his foot.

“No,” Michael says, wandering off to stare out the window. “They didn’t. Their minds were twisting themselves up into such lovely knots, they hardly needed my help at all. Still, I was around, and happy to lend a hand.” It laughs at its own joke, and she can practically _see_ the sound, swirling the dust caught in the streetlight’s glow.

Jon’s fingers tighten on her arm. Sasha gets that – Michael is a lot, and even with the benefit of a little experience she’s finding its words genuinely chilling. She wants to look back at him, reassure him, but can’t bring herself to stop tracking Michael. She and Jon are in a room with a monster that they brought there, and she can’t let herself get distracted.

She’ll be fine. She thinks she’ll be fine. Michael is, she can’t help but notice, still wearing her hair wrapped around its wrist. But she doesn’t trust Jon with it, not one bit.

“We have questions,” she tells it, and it turns from the window to meet her gaze.

“Do you expect me to answer them?” it asks, and she gets the strong sense that this particular question has one right answer, and several very wrong ones.

“I don’t know what you’ll do,” she tells it, thinking each word through before she says it. “I’m not going to pretend I understand you, your actions or motivations. But if you decide to help, I’d appreciate it.”

Suddenly, it’s _right_ in her space, looming over and around her. Jon takes a step back, yanking at her arm, but she shakes him off, stands her ground. If she runs, it will only chase her.

Fingers that are but are not as sharp as a flint sticking out of soft chalk slide under her chin, and Michael gently tilts her face up. From this close, she can see the whirlpools in its pupils again, feel their tug against her skin. Something that might be a nail scrapes lightly over her trachea.

“My motivations,” it echoes, soft as suffocation. “Hard to say what those are. I think I’d prefer you survived what’s to come. Among other things, I want to help you survive. But you’re not really mine, as much as I’d like you to be. So, you see, there’s plenty to consider.”

“I don’t see,” she says honestly, because honesty is all she has at the moment. She’s incredibly aware of how _easily_ it could kill her right now, with just a twitch of a finger. That should be terrifying. Really, it should be. But, in honesty, her only fear is that Jon is going to intervene and get himself killed. She’s not worried for herself at all, held lightly in place by something eldritch and almost certainly malevolent.

That’s probably a bad sign.

It throws back its head and laughs, the sound skidding past her ears and back round again. “Yes you do!” Then it sobers, and its eyes bore into hers. “Tell me, what do I get if I answer your questions?”

In fairness, Sasha had expected something like that. She’s always been one for old myths, and she could never help but compare Michael to a faery. You can bargain with a faery. You just have to be careful about it.

“Nothing that hurts me,” she tells it, “or anybody else. And we’re defining hurt by my terms, not yours.” It smiles at that last bit, sharp and fond.

“How about…” it muses, stroking its thumb over the skin just to the left of her lips, “…how about your dreams. That’s fair, isn’t it? You give me your dreams, little assistant, and I’ll give you answers.”

“Real answers,” she presses. “Actual answers that help and make sense.”

“But of course.” For a moment, its irises wash a deep amber, then they fade like a dying flame and seep into blue, green, purple, white. Its thumb is still rubbing against her skin.

“What does that actually mean, giving you my dreams?” She hates how small her voice sounds there, wants to eat her words back into her mouth. Her brain feels heavy.

“Nothing that hurts you,” it assures her, and she honestly thinks it might be trying to be gentle. “I need a door, if I’m to walk through. That’s all you’d be doing, giving me a door.”

“Giving you a way into my head.”

“Not your head. I wouldn’t know what to _do_ with that. Just the dreams, that’s all I want.” Its voice is almost a coo, spinning through the air around her, wafting soft and strange across her cheeks. They’re wet, she realises; she’s been crying this whole time, and hasn’t even noticed.

“And it won’t hurt me? Or anybody else?”

Jon finally does make a noise at that, muffled like he’s put his hand over his mouth. Michael doesn’t even twitch. Of course not – it knows it has her.

“It won’t hurt anybody else, and I won’t be hurting you.”

 _Stupid_ , her mum hisses in her head, _stupid stupid stupid_. But her mum is dead and Sasha is alive and she _needs_ to know. She’ll give more than just her dreams for some real, actual answers.

She nods, pressing her chin into its fingers. One catches, just beneath her jaw, and splits the skin with a little sting of pain. Michael slides its fingers out from under her chin – some idiot part of her aches to follow them, God only knows why – and one of them comes away bloody.

When it licks the blood from its finger, Sasha could swear her heart stops.

“Deal,” it says brightly, and the tension in the air breaks.

Sasha sags backwards, incredibly dizzy. Warm, human arms wrap around her waist and she leans gratefully back into Jon, then decides _fuck it_ and turns to hug him properly, burying her face in his shoulder. Jon stiffens in her arms and she’s going to pull away, really she is, but when she tries he won’t let her. She breathes in the smell of his shampoo and body wash, the human _Jon_ smell underneath it, and tries to get herself under control.

From the angle of his head, she’s pretty sure Jon is staring at Michael. From some weird animal sense that knows danger when it sees it, she knows Michael is staring back at him.

Finally, she pulls herself together enough to let Jon go and turn back around. Michael is watching them both with what can only be described as fond amusement. It’s perched in the hole where the window should be, back bent, legs crossed neatly at the knee.

Sasha takes a deep breath. The hardest part is over now. “What was that thing we killed?”

Michael gives her a slow blink, and for an awful second, she thinks it isn’t going to answer after all. Then it clasps its hands together and says, “it wasn’t you.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Sasha replies cautiously. She has a feeling Michael could take offence at that phrase. It gives her a look, like _and what do you want **me** to do about that? _But when she and Jon just keep watching it, it shrugs and continues.

“It wasn’t you, Sasha James, but everyone would have thought it was. Your friends, your colleagues, even your parents. It would have not been you but it would have worn your life all the same, and you would not have been anything, ever again.”

Hearing that is…okay, it’s terrifying, she can admit that. Even if it’s nothing they didn’t already know, or suspect. Sasha wraps her arms around her waist, and breathes through it. It’s fine. She wanted to know this. She wants answers.

Jon breaks first this time. “Why, though? Okay, so it eats Sasha, fair enough –“

“Hey!” she manages, and it’s almost funny.

“Sorry, Sasha – but what does it get out of, what, impersonating her? Stealing her life?” He’s leaning forward now, perched on the balls of his feet, and Sasha has to catch herself before she mirrors him.

Michael shrugs. It hurts to watch. “Oh, the ones it fools, they don’t matter. Just…set dressing really. But there would have been one who was spared, allowed to keep their memories of her-as-she-was. And they would have looked at this stranger in her place, and they would have been scared. And then everybody around them, friends, colleagues, parents would have told them no, don’t be silly, this is Sasha. This has always been Sasha. And then they would have looked at the thing that was not Sasha and could not have been, and they would be terrified. And _that_ would have mattered. That would have pleased it greatly.”

“Fear.” Sasha doesn’t mean to say that – the word just falls out of her mouth. But the moment it does, she sees it for the truth it is. And behind that, things begin to fall into place, one by one. “It wants people’s fear. They all do.”

All of them. The monsters, the objects, the people, the random phenomena – everything verified, it’s always somehow about _fear_. And it’s not like nobody’s noticed that, but they just tend to assume, like she had, that that’s the natural consequence of people seeing things they don’t understand, things that do tend to be kind of terrifying.

But she’s sure now. It all fits. How so many of the verified statements seem to include some normal, natural fear, just turned up and up until it becomes a warped nightmare. Spiders, darkness, tight spaces, insects, blood and gore, rot, clowns, violence, on and on – and the higher-order stuff as well; isolation, insanity, uncanny-valley style _wrongness_. Fear, one of the major human emotions in every taxonomy and so often woven into others. Diverse, easy to elicit, and hasn’t she had plenty of first-hand experience in just how _powerful_ fear can be?

When she looks over at Jon, she can see the way the realisation hits him, . They stare at each other for a second, wide-eyed and alive with the sheer amoral joy of _knowing_.

Then Michael starts clapping. “Oh, well done! And I didn’t even have to tell you that.”

At its words, the reality of the situation crashes back down on her. There are beings in this world that eat people, that eat people’s _fear_ , and she’s put herself and Jon in the room with one. For a horrible swaying second, she doesn’t feel even a little bit safe.

Jon slips his hand into hers and squeezes, and she remembers that it’s Michael, who now at the very least has a vested interest in keeping her alive so it can collect on its weird deal. It’s not the same as safety, really, but really, if she and Jon valued safety, would they be here?

Awful new knowledge spinning through her mind, Sasha can’t actually remember what she intended to ask next. Jon, thankfully, isn’t having the same problem. He’s scared, she can tell he’s scared, but he’s much too proud to show that. “What are you?” he asks, jerking his chin at Michael.

It laughs, just like it had when Sasha’d asked it the same question months ago. “I’m a little tricky to describe, Archivist. You’ll have to excuse any, ah, _imprecision_.” It slides off the window ledge and begins a slow circuit of the room, dragging the ends of its fingers along the wall. Sometimes, they leave deep scratches. “I am a thing of labyrinths, of twisted and turning passages that don’t move until you look away, but when you look back…well, perhaps they always looked like that? I am a thing of deceit and delusion. I am and I am not, and perhaps I never was at all.”

“Are you like the, the not-me then?” Sasha blurts. That question makes Michael laugh so hard it doubles over, shaking in ways that just _shouldn’t_ happen. Jon makes a little sound of disgust.

“Oh, I suppose you _could_ see it that way. We’re more similar than we are different in some respects. But in others – not very similar at all. We’re cut from different, ah, _cloth_. We serve different purposes.”

“You eat different fears,” Jon adds.

“Quite.” Michael smiles at him, and there’s still an edge of _unpleasantness_ to it. “On the one hand, fear of what should not be, is not normal. On the other, fear of what cannot be, is not possible. Fear of wrongness around you, or fear of wrongness _inside_ you. Not so different sometimes, but there are distinctions.” It’s smile widens. “Not that I care very much for distinctions.”

“Right,” Jon murmurs. Then, “if you’re so similar, why attack it?”

“I would have thought that was obvious, Archivist.” Michael waves a mostly-human hand over at Sasha, and she barely stops herself taking a step back. “She would have died, had I not intervened.”

At that, Sasha manages to find her voice again. “Why do you care if I live or die? Really, why? The first time we met, you told me you didn’t give a damn about me, and then you put me directly in danger and leave me for worm food, and _then_ you saved my life twice. I don’t _understand._ ”

Michael ceases walking its slow circuit and swings to face her. “At first, I was simply curious as to what would happen. Maybe you would manage to defeat the hive, maybe you would be consumed. I can’t say I cared much either way.” It takes a step towards her, and Sasha carefully doesn’t step back. “But you prevailed, and that was interesting. When I saw the vile little thing go squirming into you, well, that wasn’t much of a reward, for your hard work and pains. Not very _fair_.” At that word, its smile becomes mocking, twisted. “Perhaps I could have let the face-thief have you. But as I say, we serve different purposes, and were it to fulfil its purpose, I’d be unable to ever fulfil mine. It suited me to help you kill it, that’s all. _And”_ it grins wickedly, “it was fun, of course.”

Sasha stares it flatly down. “I don’t believe you,” she tells it, and Michael laughs and laughs, until Jon has to cover his ears.

“Now that is wise of you, little assistant. But if you won’t take me at my word, I’m not sure I can be of much use to you.”

“You’ve already been helpful,” Sasha tells it cautiously, trying not to blurt _we had a deal, you little-_

Jon must be thinking along the same lines, because he hurries on to his next question. “You say you serve a different purpose to the not-Sasha – what purpose is that? Beyond feeding on people’s fear.”

Michael lets out a gusty sigh. “I would ask how many more of these I need to answer before you’re both done, but I doubt there will be an end. Your kind do so love your questions, and I am _tiring_ of them.”

“Our _kind_?” Jon presses, and Sasha realises too late that she’s too far away from him, that she’s not between them anymore. That there’s nothing in Michael’s way.

Before she can even blink, Michael is _on_ him. It cannons into him, sending him stumbling into the wall behind him, and pins him there with fingers that aren’t fingers anymore. Jon cries out in shock and pain, but when Sasha runs towards him to – to do _something_ , get Michael off him _somehow_ , he holds out a hand to stop her. She hovers, tense and terrified; she can’t even _see_ Jon, can’t tell if he’s wounded, bleeding out, _anything_ …

“Don’t test me, Archivist,” she hears Michael tell him. It seems to _bend_ somehow, in a way that shouldn’t work, and when she edges round to the side she can see its face on a level with Jon’s. Jon looks _terrified_ , and from the looks of it, that pleases Michael greatly.

“We – Sasha made a deal with you,” Jon manages, voice high and a hair from breaking.

“And did she specify a time-frame?” One of Michael’s hands leaves the wall it was embedded in to brush at Jon’s hair, smoothing it down and back off his face, smiling wider when he tries to pull away. One of the fingers has a thin trail blood smeared along it. “You’ll have your answers, Archivist, but not all at once. It wouldn’t do to spoil you.”

For an awful second, Jon actually looks like he’s going to argue. Then he slumps and mutters “fine. Alright. No more questions tonight.”

“Good,” Michael croons, and as she watches its hands warp and twist, flesh sliding like…well, no, it isn’t flesh at all, not really. When it’s done, its hands are back to looking normal. From the way Jon shudders as it pets down the side of his face, for all the world like it’s trying to gentle him, Sasha doubts they feel like anything approaching normal.

“Good,” it repeats, then turns its head to Sasha in a movement that really shouldn’t be so disconcerting. “You can have your Archivist back. I’m sure we’ll all see each other soon enough.”

Then it steps away from Jon, all at once, and walks through a door that was not in that wall a moment ago. The door that isn’t there creeks closed in its wake, and she and Jon are alone again.

As soon as it’s gone, Jon’s knees give out. He slides gracelessly to the floor and buries his head in his hands, trembling violently. Sasha stands over him, feeling stiff and awkward and useless. She wants to hug him, but it’s Jon; she’s sure that’d only make it worse. Instead she lowers herself shakily to sit against the wall with him, forces herself to breath in eight/eight time and wait him out.

She’s not sure how long it takes, but eventually Jon turns his head to face her. His face has an unhealthy grey pallor and tear-tracks still gleam in the streetlight, but he manages to twitch his lips in a weary smile.

“Sorry,” he tells her in a raspy voice, and she stares at him in disbelief.

“Sorry for _what_? You just got attacked, you idiot, are you still bleeding?!”

Jon groans as he tries to push himself to standing, and Sasha leaps up to help him. He lets her, this time, and even puts an arm around her to support himself. “I don’t think it hurt me too badly. Just scratches.” He snorts, shaking his head. “I’ve had worse from cats, on several occasions.”

“I mean,” Sasha says, feeling a bubble of hysterical humour rising in her chest, “Michael basically _is_ a cat, isn’t it?”

They catch each other’s eyes and then they’re off, laughing until they can’t breathe and have to lean back against the wall for support.

After the laughter drains out of her, Sasha feels…empty. Too much happening too fast; what reserves of strength she’d built up in the last week are gone again. Jon looks even worse than she feels.

“So what,” she asks, “we just go home now?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Jon mutters, gaze suddenly sliding off to the floor. When she raises an eyebrow at him, he elaborates. “Michael now has a direct line into your sleeping brain, and we have no idea what it wants to do with it, or even what it can do with it. I just think it’d be safer if you…” he trails off, mouth working like he’s chewing through his words, then spits them out in a rush. “If you have someone else with you when you go to sleep tonight. Just in case.” He nods sharply to himself.

Part of Sasha wants to make a joke about whether summoning a monster in a derelict office block counts as a first date, but she’s not that cruel. And, frankly, she doesn’t want to argue. She’s so tired; head full of information she knows she’s not ready to think about without screaming. She made a literal devil’s deal with a creature that feeds on fear so she could get that information. She’s _done_. And having another person there for her, having _Jon_ – it’s better than going home alone. Sasha can’t imagine going home alone right now.

Jon’s injured leg starts to wobble as they leave the building, so Sasha makes an executive decision to stump for a taxi. When they get back to Jon’s after an awkward, mostly silent ride, he makes straight for the sofa, sinking onto it with a deep sigh. Grabbing a pill bottle off the coffee table, he shakes out some painkillers and takes them with a swig from an ancient-looking mug of tea. Warmth fills her chest at the little grimace he makes, and she excuses herself to the kitchen before Jon can spot the look on her face.

They should probably talk about this…thing that’s going on between them. Sasha’s aged out of her useless-bisexual phase, she’s now confident she can tell when someone’s into her, and Jon is at least as into her as she is into him. He’s not expressing it in a way she’s used to, especially not from guys – she’s been wondering for a while if she’s reading this wrong, because he doesn’t actually seem to be _attracted_ to her. But by now, she’s pretty sure that’s just Jon, just how he does things. Whether it’s sexual or not, what Jon feels about her is definitely not platonic.

So yeah, they should really talk about it. But she’s not going to start anything she can’t finish right now, and for all her apprehension about falling asleep, her body is probably going to make the choice for her sometime in the next half an hour. So, like a good Brit, she squishes down her feelings and makes tea instead.

It’s only just passed a reasonable bedtime by the time Sasha finally gets into Jon’s bed. His duvet is thick and heavy, almost like a weighted blanket, and she wraps herself up in it tightly, burrows down into soft warmth. Jon gingerly settles on the other side of the bed, propping himself up against the headboard and drawing the duvet up over his legs.

He’s scooped a book of the bedside table, has even cracked it open. But though she can’t see his face that well, now she’s taken her glasses off and has half her face pressed into the pillow, she knows he’s looking at her. Of course he is.

It should be creepy. With anyone else, it would be creepy.

She hasn’t felt this safe in months.

If Sasha does dream that night, she doesn’t remember them. She chooses to take that as a good sign.

**Author's Note:**

> *dark adam scott voice* its about the knife hands
> 
> [this series has a playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6gMCGcMgKXhJ1MmMKdqifp?si=6FaglK68SIyW4gCLiYjuzw)


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